Walking Dead spoilers: Is it time for a New World Order?

The next episode of The Walking Dead continues the All-Out War, but something that happens in the episode might set up future storylines.

Spoilers follow in this post for Episode 8.12, titled “The Key.” Proceed with caution.

As the previous episode of The Walking Dead showed, Negan has a new plan to infect all their weapons with Walker guts so when they cause flesh wounds, the infection will start to immediately kill whoever they strike. However, while the war starts to heat up here, there is a new character that will show up that might change everything.

Fans of The Walking Dead comic books have entered the New World Order storyline — a story where Rick and his family of survivors encounter a new society. This isn’t one they can bully around, like Rick die with Alexandria, though. This is a community of around 50,000 residents.

As mentioned in previous speculative articles, there are some photos from Fear the Walking Dead season 4 that look like the story of The Whisperers and Alpha might take place on that show instead of the main series.

Jenna Elfman as Naomi – Fear the Walking Dead _ Season 4, Episode 2 – Photo Credit: Richard Foreman, Jr/AMC

If that is true, the question next is what will happen on the Walking Dead season 9? If The Whisperers move over the Fear, maybe The Walking Dead will immediately jump to the story of the New World Order from the comics. Fear will time-jump and catch up with Walking Dead and Walking Dead will move ahead to parallel the comics.

What causes this speculation is that a new character shows up in “The Key” named Georgie. Much like Aaron before him, Georgie seems benign and friendly and just wants to build up communities that can work together peacefully. Also, Georgie looks a lot like Pamela Milton — the leader of the Commonwealth.

Next: Walking Dead leads Saturn Award TV nominations

Could Georgie represent the Commonwealth and could this mean that season 9 will cause Rick and company to immediately become very little fish in a giant pond? Time will tell.

The Walking Dead season 8, episode 12, “The Key,” airs on Sunday night, March 18 at 9 p.m. EST.